The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

“Three and a half years, give or take,” Florence said. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

 

I shook my head. It suddenly occurred to me to be ashamed of how I’d spent my time.

 

“It’s all right, sugar. It did you good. You look refreshed.” She gave me a smile.

 

“I came to see about the car,” I said.

 

“More visitors. Oh dear—it’s a girl.” Eliza still hadn’t deigned to look over at me. She sighed disapprovingly. “Girls shouldn’t come here. This place is inhospitable.”

 

The “girl” could more accurately be described as a teenager. Her hair was black with a magenta streak, shaved close on one side and long on the other. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell by the way she moved and walked that she was unhappy.

 

“What do you think happened to her?” Eliza asked. “Why is her head shaved? Some kind of head injury?”

 

“No, that’s not an injury,” I said. “It’s just the style. She’s Goth.”

 

“Goth? Short for Gothic?” Eliza studied the girl. “I take it that’s a mode of fashion?”

 

“Basically,” I said, looking at her long-sleeved black shirt and roughed-up black jeans. On her feet were black rubber flip-flops, and even from this distance I could tell her toenails were painted black. “For some people it goes a little deeper than that.”

 

“She looks like a vampiress,” Florence said.

 

Then the driver got out of the car.

 

I gasped.

 

“I suppose being Gothic doesn’t run in families, then,” Eliza mused. “That woman looks quite normal.”

 

I leaned closer to the window, hardly able to believe what I was seeing. “‘That woman’ is my mother!”

 

“Oh?” Eliza said, looking more carefully. “Oh … yes.”

 

“She looks like you,” Florence said. “Very pretty.”

 

And if the woman was Mom, then that meant the girl was …

 

“That’s my sister?” I said. “Oh my God—that’s Janie!”

 

“Are you quite sure?” Eliza said. “It doesn’t look like her at all. I remember her being a sweet little thing. Blond, wasn’t she?”

 

I ran outside and down the steps, desperate to get a closer look at my little sister. When I reached her, I practically skidded to a stop.

 

This … this couldn’t be Janie.

 

When I was alive, my sister’s favorite colors were pink and hot pink. Her blond hair had always been her favorite feature.

 

No way had that sugary-sweet aspiring pop princess turned into this creature of the night.

 

But when she lifted her face, there wasn’t a speck of doubt left. Despite the dark, asymmetrical hair and the eggplant-purple lips and the eyes ringed with smoky circles of gray makeup, this was definitely Janie. My Janie. I was so enthralled by the sight of her that I stood about a foot away and stared at the curves of her cheeks, the slight upturn of her nose.

 

“She’s not a little girl anymore,” I said out loud. “Look at her. She’s so …”

 

“Scary,” Theo said. He had come up behind me.

 

“Beautiful.” I shot him a cool look. “She looks like a model.”

 

“Well … not like any fashion model I ever saw in my time. But if you say so.”

 

I went back to studying my sister. How old was she now … fifteen? Nearly the age I had been when I’d died here. If I’d lived, I would have been twenty. An unexpected zap of jealousy went through me. Janie was growing up. Soon she’d be older than I ever got to be. Then she’d go to college, have a career, start a family.

 

Stop it, I scolded myself.

 

“Don’t forget your mother,” Theo said. “She’s here, too.”

 

After another few seconds spent staring at my sister, I turned to look for Mom. At first glance, she looked as she always had. Her hair was the same, she wore the same pale rose shade of lipstick, and I even recognized the gray T-shirt she was wearing as one she’d owned back when I was alive. But when I got closer, I realized that my initial impression was wrong. She’d changed. Something was different.

 

Something was … gone. It was like a piece had been removed from her soul. When she looked warily up at the house, I could see that some part of her was far away, searching. Sad.

 

Because of me.

 

Instinctively, I looked around for my father. Then it hit me—if Mom and Dad had separated three years ago, he was probably completely out of the picture by now.

 

“Why do you think they came back?” Theo asked me.

 

I didn’t really care, honestly. They could have been there to start a bunny-worshipping cult, and I would have been thrilled to see them. I felt buoyantly happy, and was suddenly struck by a strange and wonderful idea.

 

“What if they’re going to live here?” I said.

 

The scenario unfolded in my mind: Mom needed a change of scenery. Maybe she’d decided to finally work on the novel she’d always wanted to write. And this place was sitting empty, so they figured why not? Stranger things had happened, right?